Events scheduled for this week are a Poetry Slam,
Gospel Choir Jubilee and Cultural Connections. See Calendar, page 12, for details.

Documentary on Leon Fleisher of Peabody nominated for
Oscar

Two Hands, a film about Peabody piano
faculty member Leon Fleisher's battle to regain use of his
debilitated right hand, has been nominated for an Oscar in
the short documentary category.

The film was produced by Susan Rose Behr and directed
by Nathaniel Kahn, who was nominated in 2003 for My
Architect, a documentary on his father, the well-known
architect Louis Kahn.

Writing in The Baltimore Sun, movie critic
Michael Sragow said of Two Hands, "The movie
promises to be that rarity: a genuinely inspirational
film."

The Oscars will be announced Feb. 25.

Intel STS recognizes third high-schooler working in JHU
lab

For the third year in a row, a student from Baltimore
Polytechnic Institute working in the laboratory of a Johns
Hopkins professor has been named a finalist in the
prestigious Intel Science Talent Search, often referred to
as the "junior Nobel Prize" because six former finalists
later won Nobels.

Senior Emma Call was selected for a project done over
three years in the lab of David Gracias, an assistant
professor in the Whiting School's Department of Chemical and
Biomolecular Engineering. Her project was called
"Self-Assembling Three-Dimensional Microcontainers for Cell
Encapsulation."

Gracias touted Call's inventiveness in developing a
way to fabricate microcontainers at low temperature, a
process that allows the researchers to load them with
chemicals, gels and cells while they fold rather than
afterward, which is more difficult.

"I often guide Emma's research like she is a graduate
student and only occasionally have to remember that she is
actually in high school," Gracias said. "She is a co-author
on two high-quality journal papers being submitted for
review."

Call and the other 39 finalists will gather in March
at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, where
their projects will be judged. They also will be hosted at
the White House by President Bush. The finalists receive
scholarships ranging from $5,000 to the top prize of
$100,000, as well as a new laptop.

In 2006, the seventh-place spot went to Myers "Abe"
Davis, who worked with Jonathan Cohen, a research professor
in Computer Science.
Davis' project, which earned him a $20,000 scholarship, was
designed to produce more accurate physical simulations.

In 2005, Ryan Harrison, now a Baltimore Scholar at
Johns Hopkins, took fifth place and received a $25,000
scholarship for his project extending the capabilities of
Rosetta, an important computer program for genomic
scientists. The project came out of Harrison's research
over two years in the lab of Jeffrey Gray in Chemical and
Biomolecular Engineering.

All three students participated in the Ingenuity
Project, whose mission is to prepare highly capable and
motivated Baltimore City public school students to achieve
at nationally competitive levels in mathematics and
science.

SAIS to host federal deficits forum featuring Peter
Peterson

SAIS will hold
a forum this week titled "The Quad Deficits: Why They
Matter and What We Can Do About Them."

Hosted by the SAIS Center on Politics and Foreign
Relations, the Financial Times and the JHU Center
for the Study of American Government, the forum will
feature Peter G. Peterson, senior chairman and co-founder
of the Blackstone Group and chairman of the Council on
Foreign Relations and the Peterson Institute for
International Economics; David Wighton, New York City
bureau chief of the Financial Times; and Robert
Guttman, CPFR director.

Admittance to the event, which will be held at 9 a.m.
on Tuesday, Feb. 6, in Room 500 of the Bernstein-Offit
Building, is by invitation only.

JHPIEGO receives new grants for women's health
initiatives

JHPIEGO has
received funds to strengthen maternal and newborn health
services in Cambodia and Nepal.

The ACCESS Cambodia Associate Award — Maternal
and Newborn Health in Cambodia — is a three-year $1.8
million project to assist the Ministry of Health and key
local stakeholders in improving availability of and access
to high-quality, sustainable maternal and newborn health
services.

Under the award, funded by the U.S. Agency for
International Development, ACCESS will contribute in the
areas of policy, including recruitment, deployment and
retention of midwives; expansion of high-priority health
interventions to national scale; training of midwives in
essential and emergency obstetrical and newborn care;
education for midwifery students, including the development
of learning materials; prevention of postpartum hemorrhage
in facilities and in the community; and integration of
essential newborn care with existing services.